In vain I tried--now that she had expressed her willingness and desire to go--to dissuade her. I pointed out all the difficulties, the dangers. I tried to picture her life among strangers, aliens. I dilated on the dreary winters, the bitter cold of the north. But the more I said the more--woman like--she was determined to go. She would enjoy it, she was sure. With me to love her and to be loved by her she could be happy anywhere. Hardships, dangers meant nothing. Had she not been through far worse dangers, through greater sufferings? She wanted to see all the marvelous things I had related to her. She wanted to dwell among my people, to speak my language, to see the oceans. And after all I could not blame her. All her life--short as it was--had been spent in this one valley. All she knew, all she could imagine of the world was what she could see, hear and know in Mictolan. Beyond the valley was another world, a vast, unknown, undreamed of universe, as fascinating, as filled with real and imaginary wonders as another planet would have been to me. * * * * * I WOULD have set out that very day had my arm been fully recovered. At any moment, at any time the flames might disappear, the bridge might vanish. But that was a chance that had to be taken. To start off with a bad arm would have been more than foolhardy even on an ordinary expedition into the jungles. And to set forth on such a perilous, desperate venture as ours, with the handicap of a partly disabled arm would have been nothing short of suicidal. So, resigning myself to fate, I waited for the days to pass until my wounds were fully healed and my arm was again strong and whole. Each morning at dawn I gazed, half-fearfully, at the temple top; a dozen times a day my eyes turned to it; often in the night I would steal from Itza’s side and peer into the soft effulgent light to assure myself the flames were still there. As Nohul Voh had said, the wounds healed in three days--his knowledge of herbs, drugs and cures was profound indeed, but it was ten days before full strength had returned to my lacerated arm.